


Postage

by Duck_Life



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Brother-Sister Relationships, Gen, Letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 09:01:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19849891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: Haley helps her new little brother send letters to his brother at the orphanage.For a long time, no one ever writes back.





	Postage

Haley gets up when she hears the knock on her bedroom door. Mom and Dad usually just barge on in, which means it has to be— "Alex. What's up, kid?"

There's an envelope clutched in his hand. "’M trying to send a letter to Scott."

Right. Scott. The brother stuck at the orphanage. Personally, Haley doesn't understand why adoption agencies are allowed to separate brothers. It feels wrong. Even puppies and kittens get signs in the shelters, Do Not Separate. And yet here's this kid, half an ocean away from his big brother because her folks needed a replacement Todd. 

Sometimes she could just scream. 

"Okay, let's see," she says, holding her hand out. Alex seems reluctant to let go of the letter, but finally he surrenders it. The address of the Nebraska Home for Foundlings is scrawled in little-kid handwriting across the entirety of the envelope, leaving no room for postage or a return address. "Let's, uh, let's get you another envelope," she says, moving across the room to her desk drawer. 

Haley puts Alex's letter in a fresh envelope and seals it before flipping it over to copy the address in her own neat print. "You're sure this is right?"

"Uh-huh," he confirms. "Dr. Robyn gave me the address."

She doesn't ask him what he wrote in the letter. Maybe it says  _ I hate my fake family and you're lucky you aren't here with us.  _ Maybe it says  _ Haley is the best sister ever _ . It's not really her business, she decides. 

Haley writes their own address in the top left corner and then sticks a stamp in the other corner. 

"You take this to the mailbox," she says, "and put it in, and stick the little flag up so the mailman knows to take it. Okay?"

"Okay," he nods. Then— "How does my letter get over the water?"

"The postal service uses their planes."

His face darkens. "How do you know the plane won't crash? And my letter gets lost in the ocean?"

Haley winces. She lost her brother, but she's still got both her parents. Poor Alex doesn't have a mom and dad, not really, just her own parents when they look past Todd's ghost enough to see Alex. 

"It won't," she promises. Alex seems to believe her because he marches off to mail his letter.

* * *

The day after sending the letter to Scott, Alex walks in from checking the mail looking dejected. "He didn't write back."

"Oh, kiddo, you gotta wait a little longer," Haley says. "Your letter has to get all the way to Nebraska. And then when Scott does write back, that letter takes time to get back here."

"How much time?"

"I don't know," she says. "Maybe two weeks? Maybe longer."

Alex waits two weeks. No letters come for him. He decides that maybe his letter got lost, so he writes another one and gets another stamp from Haley, and he sends that off. 

Over the course of about two years, Alex sends dozens of letters to his brother on the mainland. He never gets a single letter back. No return-to-sender, no notice that Scott's been adopted by another family. Nothing. Like everything he writes is just getting swallowed up. 

Eventually, Alex stops writing. Haley thinks he's realized that if Scott were ever going to write back, it would have happened by now. 

It sucks. She thinks Todd would have written back, if he could have. Maybe Scott would, too. Maybe he never got any of the letters. Maybe, maybe, maybe. 

* * *

Haley comes home from grocery shopping one day to find Alex sitting at the kitchen table, eyes swollen from crying, a letter trembling in his hands. She's about to ask if it's yet another speeding ticket when Alex looks up at her with a big watery grin. "Hales," he says, waving the letter around, "Hales, look at this."

She sits down next to him and reads the letter over his shoulder.

_ Dear Alex, _

_ I wish I'd been able to track you down sooner, but the resources weren't available to me. Even now, it's hard to believe that I actually have your address sitting on a notecard in front of me. I think Dr. Hanover was going to give me your new address, after you were adopted, but… I don't know. She never did.  _

Haley's eyes skim over the rest of the letter— it looks like a lot of awkwardly worded reassurances and apologies. The bottom of the page is what really captures her attention:  _ Love, Scott. _

"Oh my God," she breathes. 

Alex has started crying again, crying and smiling. "I know. I know. Scott found me."

She wants to know why it took Scott until eight years later to write. She wants to know what happened to all those dozens and dozens of letters Alex sent out when he was little. But that's for later, or never, or it's not her business. She can be happy for him, and for this. It's what a good big sister would do. 


End file.
